1. Field of the Invention
The field of the present invention relates to automated data transfer and translation. The invention provides a method and structure for automatically transferring data, such as accounting data, from a variety of remote sources, in a variety of formats to a plurality of remote sites, where the data is entered into computer applications or storage, the transfer including format translation for compatibility. The invention serves as means to eliminate time-consuming and error-producing manual data re-entry.
2. Background
Computerized data, or electronically stored information, must frequently be moved from one computer to another. In the case of accounting data, for example, banks generally keep computerized records of all of transactions affecting their client's accounts--information which the clients often also wish to keep track of on their own computerized accounting systems. In response to this, a variety of sophisticated computer accounting programs have recently become available to users of small and medium powered computers. However, due to a variety of reasons discussed below, such clients usually have to re-enter data manually from paper printouts obtained from the data provider, for example, from statements from a bank. Manual re-entry of data is not only time-consuming, and hence expensive to undertake in terms of man-hours, but it also is likely to introduce errors into the data set. It has been estimated that manual data re-entry, verification, and validation costs several dollars per transaction.
Methods of automated data transfer are known in the art. The "Intellicharge" system for Quicken (Intuit Inc., Menlo Park, Calif.) downloads credit card transaction information to a Quicken user's computer. The data used, however, comes from a uniform source--a single bank. Hence, Intellicharge does not employ a multiple-format data translation scheme, nor a multiple-source data transmission scheme. Similarly, in the United States Internal Revenue Service "Electronic Filing" program, data is entered and transmitted in a single, specific pre-prescribed format, to a single recipient.
Methods of data translation are also known in the art. A software application entitled "Data Junction" (Tools and Techniques, Inc., Austin, Tex.) translates multiple formats of data. However, the package depends on manual operation to designate the files to be translated, and the formats of the source and destination files. Furthermore, this software does not perform any data transfer, verification, validation, exception reporting, or journal entry correction.
Conventional electronic data exchange (EDI) systems involve two or more companies that have agreed to interact with one another according to a pre-designated standard dictated by the industry in which the transaction is taking place. In order for such a system to work for a given industry, there must be an agreed-upon standard that is used-much like in the case of the IRS system described above. Those industries that do not have such a standard cannot participate. Data analysis, such as exception reporting or statistical analysis, are not features of such systems. Obviously, such systems lack flexibility and versatility. Additionally, the computer systems that support conventional EDI are expensive to operate and maintain because they are specialized to serve specific industry segments, and hence cannot achieve the efficiency and low cost that economies of scale might permit in a more widely applicable system.
In summary, conventional methods of automated data transfer, and of data translation, are quite limited, due primarily to limited network transfer capabilities, and the lack of universal data format standards. Hence, anyone wishing to automatically transfer data from a variety of computer systems to a variety of others must contend with a plethora of incompatible formats, and a lack of reliable transfer and error detection means. For these reasons, existing data transfer systems have been tailored to work with only one, or very few types of data sources and recipients, and these data translation methods rely heavily on manual intervention. Data transfer technologies and data translation technologies have not, in the prior art, been efficiently integrated.